Z-Minus Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Perrin Briar

  Finally George pulled up before a thick barricade of cars, smashed so firmly together it was difficult to tell where one vehicle began and another ended.

  “Here we go again,” Chris said as he began to get out.

  “Chris,” George said. “Look at it. We can’t move every single car on the road out of the way. We don’t have the time.”

  “What do you suggest we do?”

  George looked out the window at the vehicles around them, hoping for an idea to strike him. None did.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s just hope it’s not like this the whole way.”

  As George began to get up from his seat, his eyes flickered over to one side. His eyes alighted on something.

  He turned the steering wheel and hit the accelerator, knocking Chris back into his seat and slamming his door behind him.

  “George!” he said. “What the hell?”

  George drove the car toward the outside edge of the motorway and squeezed between a delivery lorry and a coach. He sped down the embankment and onto a carpark that had Rally Racing Course written across the front of the main building. It was located in the midst of a forest, leafless trees branching off in all directions. George drove past the building and stopped before a dirt track. There was a small building with a series of coloured lights attached to it, sticking out the window.

  “This will never get us all the way down to London,” Chris said.

  “No,” George admitted, “but it could get us past the pile up.”

  “You’d best let me take over.”

  “You just put your seatbelt on. You too, Maisie.”

  “George, I really don’t think this is the right time for you to drive-”

  “Hold on.”

  George shifted down a gear, hit the accelerator, and spun the wheel around, the back wheels spitting up gravel, loose stones and glass from a smashed window as it pulled onto the rally course.

  “George!” Chris said, arms gripping his seatbelt tight. “George!”

  George, calm and collected, pulled the wheel with his huge arms. The car turned sideways, drifting. The wheels caught and then pulled them around the corners. They sped over a short rise and came down the other side, heading toward a shallow pool of water. Chris braced his arms on the dashboard.

  “Maisie!” he said. “Brace yourself!”

  The car splashed through the water, dousing the trees to either side. The water smelled stagnant. The car powered up the incline on the other side. It was steep and long and George had to lower gears to crawl up to the top. As they approached the peak, the car engine sputtered and juddered with effort, like it was going to implode. And then as it reached the apex it got stuck and felt like it was going to stall and roll backwards.

  The engine mounted the top and pulled itself up inch by inch. At the top, George applied the brakes and let the car sit there a moment. The dirt road continued over the top in a straight line on the other side and then disappeared around a sharp corner.

  “Hold on to your hats,” George said, putting the car into first gear.

  He hit the accelerator and the car skidded slightly, veering left and right on the spot before taking off. The car picked up speed quickly down the incline and before Chris knew it, they were at the bottom. George spun the wheel around, taking the sharp turn, and threw the car’s back end out. Chris was surprised to see George hadn’t taken his foot off the accelerator. George had an intense look of concentration on his face like it were just him and the track in the whole world.

  Then the road extended into a long left turn. George pushed the car into the corner to gain more speed. There was a short rise and sharp fall. George reduced speed and changed gears lightning-fast. The course took another corner and George handled it well, although he did not take the fastest line this time. The road disappeared around a long corner. George brought the car to a stop. The metal body ticked with heat and seemed to sigh with relief, sinking slightly into the road.

  “Looks like the course is going to wind back upon itself,” George said. “We’d better find another way through.”

  “Where did you learn to drive like that?” Chris said.

  George smiled.

  “You’re not the only one with skills, you know,” he said.

  Through the trees the motorway shone like a black vein on a dying man’s arm. Sunlight glinted off the windows and mirrors of a dozen parked cars.

  George pulled the car off the dirt rally track and onto a thick blanket of dead leaves on the forest floor. The car pulled through, the wheels finding invisible rocks and crevices. George pulled the wheel left and right through the foliage to avoid whatever obstacles he came across. Occasionally there was a snap as the car ploughed through a tree root that had snagged on the car’s underside and then broken free.

  Then the car hit something and slid sideways. George threw the steering wheel around, but they were sailing toward a large tree trunk that loomed up before them. George fought the steering wheel, teeth gritted. He didn’t hit the brakes, and instead gently took his foot off the accelerator. The moment the wheels bit and found grip with the forest floor, he hit the accelerator and the car took off again.

  The woods ended with a tall wooden fence. The car took it between two fence posts, obliterated into shards under the car’s weight. The car skidded to a halt on the motorway.

  The blockage of cars was on their left, five hundred yards down the road. There was a smattering of cars where they were, but the way looked clear.

  “Now that’s what I call a detour,” George said, starting up the engine again and pulling away.

  Z-MINUS: 6 HOURS 4 MINUTES

  “I was once trained as a rally driver,” George said. “Someone saw my skills and wanted to take the chance. I did the training but I could never face the competition at the end of it. All those eyes, all those judging eyes… I always worried about failing. I regret it to this day, not even attempting the try outs. I could have done well. I could have been someone. Instead I stopped training and went back to committing minor crimes and did what everyone else was doing. I wish I could go back and change things. Though I suppose, if the world was going to end up like this anyway I wouldn’t have lost a great deal.”

  They passed a car on the side of the road. A zombie’s leg was caught in the door. Its skin was bleached white and it stood on one leg. It reached for them as they passed with an outstretched ragged hand and a mouth dry and sore from lack of moisture. George drove past it.

  “How are you feeling back there, Maisie?” George said.

  “Sick.”

  “Do you need to go outside and throw up?” Chris said.

  “No,” she said. “It’s from the driving.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s all right.”

  “Shall we play the memory game again?” George said.

  “What memory game?”

  “If you’ve forgotten it already, your memory can’t be very good now, can it? Tell me your name, where you live…”

  Maisie laid her head on the back of her seat in exasperation.

  “Do I have to?” she said.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Fine. My name’s Maisie Smith. I live on Usher’s farm with dad and the Joneses. My favourite colour is sherbet lemon yellow. My favourite toy is Mario Kart. There, happy?”

  “Favourite TV show?”

  “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.”

  George smiled.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he said.

  Just then, the car shook like it was having a fit, and there was a loud knocking sound. The engine sputtered and coughed. Steam seeped from beneath the bonnet and then poured out like river waters over the edge of a great fall.

  Chris looked out the window. They were on the hard shoulder of the motorway, rolling farm fields on one side of the road, a small thatch of woodland on the other. A pheasant honked as it flapped its wings and flew over the road toward the empty fields.
There were shrubs and trees not far away, but they would still see an attack coming.

  “Great,” Chris said, throwing up his hands. “Any minute now we’ll start hearing banjo music. We were making good time, too.”

  “At least we’ve still got half a tank,” George said.

  “Thank God for that. For a minute I thought we were in trouble. We’re stuck in the middle of nowhere!”

  “You Smiths. Always have been drama queens.”

  George pulled the lever to pop the bonnet and got out.

  “The good thing about these old cars is they’re easy to fix,” he said.

  “Lock the doors,” Chris said to Maisie as he got out.

  He heard the doors lock behind him as he joined George at the front of the car. He lifted the bonnet and peered down at the engine. It was old, looking like something that belonged in a museum. The grill had leaves, roots and snapped branches protruding from it like it was wearing a disguise.

  “What’s our problem?” Chris said.

  George slapped the crank. He unfastened the attachments and held it up. The strips of tin had been torn through.

  “Here’s our problem,” George said. “I fear the rally course was a bit too much for her.”

  “Where will we find a replacement out here?”

  “We don’t need to find a replacement. We can make one.”

  George rounded the car to the boot and opened it. A small pile of battered baked bean tins had rolled to one corner.

  “Bean tins?” Chris said. “What are we going to do? Sit around a fire and sing songs to the car? Hope it heals by magic?”

  George picked up one of the tins. It was empty. He peeled off the label and tossed it into the boot.

  “This is our replacement part,” he said.

  George took a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and cut it into strips. He moved back to the engine compartment and wrapped the strips around the crank.

  “It won’t last forever,” George said, lowering the bonnet and pushing it down so it clicked into place. “But it should at least get us to London. Maybe back too.”

  He pulled the sprigs of foliage out from the car’s crevices and tossed them aside.

  “Rarr.”

  The sound came from the direction of a shrub. A zombie, its broken jaw hanging off, its long tongue flapping against its throat, and sticky saliva running down its bare chest, limped toward them in its awkward gait.

  “It’s just one,” Chris said, bending down to pick up a rock. “I’ll take care of it.”

  The foliage rustled and a dozen more zombies lurched out, eyes white and rolling around in their sockets.

  “On second thoughts let’s just get out of here,” Chris said, dropping the rock and running to the car with George.

  They pulled on the car door handles, but they wouldn’t open. Chris turned to see Maisie fast asleep on the back seat. He knocked on the window with his knuckles, and then beat at it with the palm of his hands. Maisie murmured, and then rolled over and continued to sleep.

  “Maisie!” Chris shouted.

  The zombies had covered half the distance, their unnatural movements slow but consistent, their teeth chipped, stained yellow and black, mawed open like deep dark caverns. George picked up a rock and struck his window. A spider web spread across its surface like cracks across the surface of a frozen pond. Maisie started awake.

  George brought the rock down again, forming a hole in the middle of the window. He reached in, pulled the lock up, and opened the door. Maisie reached over and unlocked Chris’s door.

  “I told you not to fall asleep!” Chris said.

  “I’m sorry!” Maisie said. “I just shut my eyes for a second.”

  “That second might have killed us!” Chris said.

  “I think we’ve got other things to worry about right now, don’t you?” George said, reaching for the keys in the ignition. “I sure hope this works.”

  George turned the key. The engine sputtered and coughed, a puff of black smoke erupting from the exhaust. The engine roared like a tiger released from its cage, and then immediately died.

  The zombies were on them now, faces pressed up against the glass, hands feeling, gripping and prying at the boot and the wheel arches. A zombie poked its fingers in through the hole in George’s window.

  “Uh, George,” Chris said.

  “I can see them,” George said. “Thanks for pointing out the obvious.”

  He turned the key again. The car wheezed, and a thick blanket of smoke and soot discharged from the exhaust pipe, dousing the zombies behind. George pressed his foot to the accelerator, gently revving the engine. The soot became dirty black and then cleared as it worked through the system. The engine putted. George put the car into first and began to pull away. The zombies were smothered in a dirty grey mist, and their fingers lost any purchase they’d made as the car pulled away.

  Z-MINUS: 5 HOURS 48 MINUTES

  Welcome to Cambridgeshire, the sign said.

  They came to a roundabout and took the first exit. They rounded the outside of the industrial estate, the unlovely grey blocks drab and dreary, oddly suiting the apocalypse perfectly.

  “How far have we got left to go?” George said.

  “We’re about a quarter of the way. We’re coming up to Cambridge.”

  “Won’t be long till we’re there!” George said with a grin.

  Chris looked over at Maisie in the backseat. She was looking out at the buildings, her face frowning with thought. She looked so like her mother, Chris thought. He took off his seatbelt and climbed over into the backseat.

  “I’m sorry for shouting at you earlier,” Chris said.

  “That’s all right. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have gone to sleep. You told me not to.”

  “I still didn’t have to react the way I did. Come here.”

  Maisie turned to look at him. He gently wrapped his arms around her and held her close, letting her frizzy hair tickle his chin. For a moment they just sat like that while the car’s engine whirred.

  “When you thought you’d been infected you got to see all the things from your past,” Maisie said, her voice muffled slightly by Chris’s clothes.

  “There isn’t anything on the way to London that you would remember,” Chris said.

  “No, but I don’t want to see my past. I want to see my future.”

  “Future? What do you mean?”

  “Mum and me always wanted to travel,” Maisie said. “We wanted to go to lots of different places, you know. See the world. Explore. But we never did.”

  Her voice was soft and her eyes were closed and she looked like she was drifting off to sleep.

  “We never got to see Rome,” she said. “Or Paris… America… Asia…”

  “Maisie?” Chris said. “Maisie? Wake up. You can’t sleep now. Maisie! Maisie, get up. Sit up.”

  “I’m tired…”

  “I know you’re tired, but you can’t sleep yet. Maisie, look. Look at that.”

  Chris pointed to something random out the window. Maisie half-opened her eyes and then drifted back to sleep again. Then Maisie’s expression froze. She looked up at Chris in alarm, her eyes wide, her eyebrows knitted together.

  “Maisie?” Chris said. “What’s wrong?”

  She raised her hand to her nose, touching just below the nostril as if something was there.

  “What is it?” Chris said.

  “Nothing,” Maisie said, frowning. “I just thought I felt…”

  Then Chris saw it. A thin line of red trickled out of Maisie’s nose. Off his expression, Maisie touched her nose again, and felt the blood there. It ran over her fingers to her lips.

  “Dad?” she said, a quiver of fear in her voice. “What’s happening?”

  Chris held her tight.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You’re going to be okay.”

  The blood soaked into Chris’s clothes. He felt the warmth of the blood turn cold.

  “Tilt your head bac
k and hold your nose,” Chris said.

  “What’s going on?” George said, casting a look into the backseat.

  “It’s Maisie,” Chris said. “She’s got a nosebleed.”

  “That’s not a nosebleed. That’s her body fighting the virus, trying to flush it out. Look at her eyes. Is she sleeping?”

  Chris angled Maisie’s head up and saw they were indeed fluttering closed, Maisie doing her best to fight and keep them open.

  “Maisie, stay awake!” Chris said. “Can you hear me? Stay awake!”

  But Maisie didn’t respond, her eyes flickering like she was in deep REM sleep.

  “She’s not waking up!” Chris said.

  Then Maisie’s body began to shake, and a thin trickle of blood poured out of her nose and ears.

  “Not now!” Chris said. “She can’t turn now!”

  “Slap her!” George said. “Make her wake up!”

  Chris slapped her across the face. She didn’t respond, so he slapped her again, harder this time.

  “It’s no good!” he said.

  Chris’s looked out the window. They were surrounded on both sides by mounds of earth. He had an idea.

  “Pull over!” Chris said.

  “What?” George said. “Why?”

  “Just do it!”

  Chris began opening the door before the car had even stopped. George pulled the steering wheel over to one side, pulling the car off the road. The forward momentum threw Chris’s door open.

  Chris got out, carrying Maisie, and ran up the muddy embankment. He slipped as he made his way up to the top, but regained his footing. A narrow canal ran parallel to the road, separated by the mound down the centre. Canal boats were moored up in long lines along either side, leaving a single thin lane of water through the middle.

  Chris ran down the opposite side of the mound. He let gravity take him, and as he drew close to the canal, he threw Maisie into the slow-flowing water. She disappeared beneath the surface for a second and then burst up, gasping a deep lungful of air, her hair plastered to her face.